George Croner Email & Phone Number

George W. Croner is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a nonpartisan organization that produces original research and analysis on foreign policy and national security law. He is recognized as a top expert in legal issues related to U.S. foreign intelligence collection practices and electronic surveillance. Mr. Croner spent more than forty years in government service and private legal practice. He is currently “Of Counsel” to the law firm of Kohn, Swift & Graf, where he was a shareholder and director from 1988 until his retirement from active practice in 2016. Prior to that, he served in the Operations Division of the Office of General Counsel at the National Security Agency (NSA), which included service as NSA’s principal litigation representative while serving as a Judge Advocate (JAG) in the U.S. Navy.Though retired from legal practice, Mr. Croner has enjoyed a highly visible (and personally rewarding) “second act” as a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). His work at FPRI focuses on legal issues related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), U.S. intelligence collection abroad, and legal and foreign policy issues related to signals intelligence. In addition to producing original research and writing for FPRI, Mr. Croner provides nonpartisan (though opinionated) insights on national security issues for digital publications including Just Security, Lawfare, and the blog of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL), where he serves in an advisory role. At NSA, Mr. Croner participated in the legal oversight of NSA’s signals intelligence (SIGINT) operations and FISA compliance. As NSA’s principal litigation counsel, he held TS/SCI clearance (the U.S. government’s highest security classification access) and represented the agency in several prominent espionage prosecutions. He was also the agency’s designated representative to the interagency group responsible for reviewing and (where possible) declassifying intelligence during the investigation of the Iran-Contra affair. Though he no longer practices law actively, George Croner retains bar memberships in the bars of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court. He has an “AV”® rating in the Martindale-Hubbell legal rating system.